Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Lovingkindness, motherfuckers.

If you are going to expose yourself on the Internets, you will need to have some way to respond to criticism. I can't say I consistently manage this, but it is good to reach high.

In the same way, monks, others may use these five modes of speech when speaking to you — speech that is timely or untimely, true or false, gentle or harsh, with a good or a harmful motive, and with a loving heart or hostility. In this way, monks, you should train yourselves: 'Neither shall our minds be affected by this, nor for this matter shall we give vent to evil words, but we shall remain full of concern and pity, with a mind of love, and we shall not give in to hatred. On the contrary, we shall live projecting thoughts of universal love to that very person, making him as well as the whole world the object of our thoughts of universal love — thoughts that have grown great, exalted and measureless. We shall dwell radiating these thoughts which are void of hostility and ill will.' It is in this way, monks, that you should train yourselves.

Am I just hopeless? I don't even see why I should aspire to this. It's too much work. I'm usually a nice person, and very few people really get me going. So isn't that good enough? I AM KIND, Ms. Poopypants!!!

I know, but try saying it out loud a couple times. It scans so well. Besides, there wasn't much content to that post. Does having that anywhere on the page mean that you can't link my blog until motherfucker is off the front?

"At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this,. It is not uncommon to meet pastors' wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either."

OMG. OMFG. I'll have to try that with MY wife..."If you don't wear that crotchless pantyhose for me tonight, I just might go out for some gay massage instead!"

Nick, I'm not sure if comparisons are that useful; I mean, it is widely recognized that England was on its way out from India or thinking about it from the 1910's onwards (pull back in investment).

I don't know much about Martin Luther or America's history but after centuries of slavery and a century of segregation I wonder if freedom was *only* a result of peaceful movements. It is quite plausible to suggest that the plantations became economically less feasible with the growth in agricultural productivity in Europe and , in a similar vein, segregation became more problematic in an era of 'liquid modernity' where more people have to be incorporated into the capitalist system.

the point being: i don't think we can make comparisons without looking at the political and economic contexts.

And one could come up with all sorts of counter examples. Do you think lack of military resistance to Nazi Germany would have been feasible? Or Communist Russia?

Lovingkindness to good people is uncontroversial. I think there is some difference of opinion among us imaginary beings about who the good people are.

Slightly off-topic, but on-topic for compliments....I'm reading Nietzsche's "Beyond Good And Evil" at the moment, and it has a quote about "compliments":In accordance with the slowly arising democratic order of things (and its cause, the intermarriage of masters and slaves), the originally noble and rare urge to ascribe value to oneself on one's own and to "think well" of oneself will actually be encouraged and spread more and more now; but it is always opposed by an older, ampler, and more deeply ingrained propensity -- and in the phenomenon of "vanity" this older propensity masters the younger one. The vain person is delighted by every good opinion he hears of himself (quite apart from all consideration of its utility, and also apart from truth or falsehood), just as every bad opinion of him pains him: for he submits to both, he feels subjected to them in accordance with that oldest instinct of submission that breaks out in him.

It is "the slave" in the blood of the vain person, a residue of the slave's craftiness -- and how much "slave" is still residual in woman, for example! -- that seeks to seduce him to good opinions about himself; it is also the slave who afterwards immediately prostrates himself before these opinions as if he had not called them forth.